Shocking video of a horrifying attack on a boat has many doubting they will go back in the water

The ocean remains the last unexplored frontier on Earth.

And you never know just what dangers lurk beneath the surface of the salty water. 

That’s why a video of a horrifying attack on a boat has left many questioning whether they ever want to go back in the water. 

A whale seemingly attacks and then capsizes a boat 

Two men ended up in the Atlantic Ocean just off the coast of Portsmouth, New Hampshire after a humpback whale suddenly rose out of the water and capsized their boat.

Dramatic video showed the massive whale breaching the water and then landing squarely on the back of the fishing boat.

The whale, which was estimated to be around 40 tons, tossed the 23-foot boat like a toy.

Boaters Greg Paquett and his friend, Ryland Kenney, were thrown into the water after the attack.

“It was a harrowing experience, but you can see from the video exactly what happened. The whale came up, landed on our transom, the boat kind of came up like this, the front’s in the air, and then turned over,” Paquette said.

Kenney then abandoned ship before the boat capsized. 

“And so, he leapt away from [the] boat as it was going sideways, and I was kind of underneath the front of the boat,” Paquette said.

Paquette managed to escape after he was briefly trapped underneath the boat. 

“I’ll tell you, we were lucky, we were really lucky,” Paquette remarked.

Kennedy said that the whole harrowing situation happened in a flash.

And even more frightening was when he came face to face with the whale during the encounter.

“I was probably about 3 feet from the whale’s head, and I saw him come up and open his mouth, I think that’s when I was like ‘whoa’ and his mouth closed and it crunched the engine,” Kenney said.

Both men somehow miraculously avoided any serious injuries. 

“Like Greg said, the bow went up, and it started tilting over, and I kind of didn’t know what to do. I was kind of on the side when the boat was coming up, kind of ‘Superman’d’ off the side of the boat and just went in,” Kenney added.

Did the whale intentionally attack the boat? 

Brothers, 19-year-old Wyatt Yager, and 16-year-old Colin Yager were on a nearby boat and were able to capture the dramatic video of the incident.

“I just dropped everything and just started driving over to them,” Wyatt Yager said. “They swam around to the back and climbed up the ladder.”

The capsized boat was eventually towed back to shore.

“It didn’t really feel like there was any risk to go help them. It just felt like what we had to do,” Colin said.

The Coast Guard said that the whale did not appear to suffer injury during the incident.

Dianna Schulte, the Director of Research at the Blue Ocean Society for Marine Conservation speculated that the whale was feeding.

“I have never seen a whale intentionally hit a boat before. That’s why I think it was just feeding,” Schulte said. “The fishermen probably knew that there was a whale around and that’s why they were fishing, because they wanted to catch some of the same fish that the whales were going after.”

The boaters were certainly lucky to swim away unharmed after finding themselves in the path of one of the largest animals in nature.

No word yet on when, or if, they will head out into the ocean again.